


Stare from each side

by deadendtracks (amonitrate)



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Season/Series 05, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-13 01:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21486154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/deadendtracks
Summary: He didn’t get many calls, did he, being dead, so whoever it had been must have actually wanted to reach him.Missing scene from "Mr. Jones," someone answers one of Tommy’s callswritten as a treat
Relationships: Tommy Shelby & Alfie Solomons
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61
Collections: Peaky Blinders Exchange Round Two: Season 5 Edition





	Stare from each side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hrafnsmal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hrafnsmal/gifts).

> I do not consent to have my work hosted on or accessed by any third party app or site. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but archiveofourown it has been reposted or accessed without my permission. Please be aware that I am strongly against this type of app and ask that you access my fic via AO3 in the future.

“Hang on, fucking hell, hang on.”

He could shout all he wanted, didn’t mean whoever was calling him at this fucking hour was going to wait for him to make it to his office. The ringing went on and on, and of course, of fucking course, it cut off right as he opened the office door. He lifted the receiver anyhow. He didn’t get many calls, did he, being dead, so whoever it had been must have actually wanted to reach him. 

“Yeah, you got the number that just called me, love?” he asked the girl at the exchange. “Right, good, well, put me through.”

And now, on the other side of the call, it rang and rang again. A Birmingham number because of course it was, who else would be calling him this late? He’d just about given up when the call connected, and then he was met with nothing. At first he thought maybe it had dropped, the call, but then there was a faint sound, traffic maybe, the distant chime of a clock.

“Dead men, you know, we don’t usually answer the fucking telephone let alone make calls of our own, so whatever it is you needed, it better be important, mate.”

“Alfie.” It came flat, his name, almost bored, and it weren’t followed by nothing else, just more silence that wasn’t quite silent.

“What, you rethinking our deal? I’ve already promised a good group of lads the 25 we agreed on, right, so if it’s called off I’ll still need--”

“No.” Then nothing else again. 

“You do remember that you, mate, were the one who called me.” Alfie sank into the chair at his desk, scratching his beard in puzzlement, because this whole thing was entirely upside-down, wasn’t it. A man didn’t just call you, hang up, then have nothing to say when you returned the favor.

On the other end of the line he could hear Tommy clearing his throat, then a sound that must have been his lighter.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, eventually. His voice seemed to be coming from farther away than Birmingham. Hollow, the way a long-distance call sounded. Like he was calling from Istanbul, maybe, or Gallipoli.

“What doesn’t fucking matter?” 

But the line went dead.

It rang again five, six times before he picked up this time. “What.”

“Tommy, you fucking called me, right, and then you fucking hung up on me, so I think if anyone is going to make demands here, it’s not fucking you.” There was a thunk on the other end, like something heavy, something metal dropped onto wood. “This is your office number, innit?”

“Yeah.” 

Right. This was ridiculous, it was fucking ridiculous that he was even trying to pry anything out of this situation.

“So does this mean you had my number all along, even after my letter, and you’re only choosing to make use of it now, tonight?” That bought him more silence, because the answer was obvious, wasn’t it. “Hmm. Alright then. So which is it?” 

He left the silence alone this time, didn’t fill it the way he’d usually have done compulsively, and the call didn’t end this time. Just stretched on into nothingness, until finally it must have been too much.

“Which is what?” Tommy asked, no curiousity at all in his tone.

“Gangs, wars, truces. Which is it led you to call me tonight, Thomas?”

He thought maybe he could hear Tommy take a sharp inhale. “Wars.” 

“Already?” Alfie whistled. “My men haven’t even left London, so you’re a little early, aren’t you.”

“Not…” Tommy drifted off for a moment, then continued, as if the words were being dragged from him one by one. “A war of a different sort.”

“That why you called, this war? Because mate, I might be a god, but I’ve only got so many men on Earth, no matter what you can afford to pay them.”

“Not that kind of war.” He’d gone blurry around the edges, Tommy. 

“Right, okay, so what kind of war exactly--”

“Not one I started.” For the first time there was something there, a thread of rage. 

Alfie tried the same trick as before, failing to fill the air in hopes it might prompt something more, but it didn’t work this time. Tommy’d sunk into quiet again. It occurred to him, finally, that Tommy might not be quite sober. He didn’t sound drunk, did he, but he didn’t sound right neither. 

“So between leaving Margate and arriving at your office, someone’s declared war on you?”

“Alfie,” he said. “It’s none of your fucking concern.”

“Suppose not, mate, but as I think I mentioned earlier, you were the one to call me tonight, and you have yet to fill me in on the reason for that call, so I was just making conversation until you felt the appropriate time had been reached to--”

“Family business.” And there was bitterness there, yeah, enough to poison a man.

“There someone there with you?” he asked, without even knowing why.

“Not anymore.”

Right.

“So am I to understand you had no reason for calling, then?”

On the other end of the line, Tommy coughed roughly, didn’t answer. Didn’t hang up, neither. Alfie didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, but for some reason he didn’t end the call himself. 

“Did you know that the entrance to Dreamland, yeah, is right here in Margate?” Tommy made a sound, a soft hum of some sort, which must have meant he was listening. “In Dreamland, you can get in a contraption that pitches you around just like you was on a ship, you know, instead of boarding the real thing right there at the docks. People pay good money for a bout of seasickness, right, but I suppose for some the amusements are as close as they’ll get to the thrill of real risk.” 

“You’ve been dead too long,” Tommy said, suddenly, “if you think real risk comes with any thrill.”

“Doesn't it?” He thought, then, of Tommy counting down to the bang, to the way a gun in his face had never provoked more than boredom. “Hmm. Didn’t say the thrill had to be an enjoyable one. Gets harder and harder to reach that thrill, though, don’t it, the more you risk. Keep having to drive up the odds.”

“There’s no fucking _ thrill _ in any of this. There never fucking was.”

Now that, that last part, that was a lie. “You’re telling me there’s no thrill at all in what you’ve got planned? Killing the man, then killing his message?”

The silence was thick as mustard gas rolling across a field. 

This time, when the call disconnected and he had the girl ring Tommy’s office again, nobody answered, no matter how long he let it ring.

Fucking hell.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Hrafnsmal's prompt "maybe a version of the final episode where Tommy calls Alfie during his breakdown, when all of his family members don't answer."
> 
> Title from I Remember Nothing by Joy Division.


End file.
